If you’ll excuse a mixed metaphor, I re-read my last post through the rose tinted spectacles of perfect hindsight. Rose tinted because the 20-20 vision of retrospect makes it so blissfully easy to see, and so hard to imagine not seeing, what might, to a more experienced contemporary eye appear down right obvious. Was I really so mindlessly intent on ticking off the miles that I didn’t spot my impending downfall? Was I really paying so much attention to the odometer that I didn’t realise that last mile involved driving the whole show off a cliff?

Yep. Seems so.

I remember once reading a book about the likelihood of nuclear apocalypse (cheery stuff!), which suggested that the brink of war was not the clearly defined edge of a cliff where one can stand firmly and make a decision on whether or not to jump, but in fact a curved slope that one can totter onto with some risk of slipping. Well, it seems this applies to a few other things too and the problem is that often in this case you don’t realise when you’ve gone past the event horizon and it’s just too late to claw yourself back up that muddy bank, even if you are wearing your best cross country spikes. And before you ask… It wasn’t a dramatic blow up. I didn’t sustain a sudden and violent injury. No, my IT band didn’t go ping. I didn’t develop plantar fasciitis or give myself a stress fracture. Ohhh, no. far harder to spot than any of that lovely physical stuff. So first there was the rather short lived and hollow little ego trip that was the ‘I ran over 38 miles this week and still fitted in all my professional and family commitments! I am a machine! I am unstoppable! I can RULE THE WORLD AND EAT ALL THE CAKE!’ Then, when the endorphins wore off and the miles had been fastidiously logged down to the last fraction, there was the slow realisation that next week, i.e. tomorrow, a whole new training week would commence with a demand for 5 more miles on top of what had already felt like a superhuman feat. Fine. Monday’s a rest day anyway. Cycling to work? Just a commute, what’s the biggy? Don’t feel like training on Tuesday? Must just be feeling lazy, I’m a machine remember, an infallible automaton of slickly whirring cogs, do it anyway. Cross training Wednesday? Don’t fancy it but it should be easy, tempo run Thursday, ugh, but OK, hill session Friday, if I must, Saturday I’ll probably swim, that’s nice, long run Sunday, I’ll drag myself through somehow and… oh blimey then it’ll be Monday and time to start it all again. And work is still demanding attention. And no, those family and personal issues haven’t gone away and are still requesting time and commitment. It seems despite your best efforts you really can’t out-run your demons forever and before I knew it… I didn’t want to run. I know, right? Me? Not want to run!? And we’re not talking that lacing-up lethargy or pre-race jitters but a full on, panicky aversion to the whole sport. Suddenly, there I was at the bottom of the chasm I hadn’t even noticed I was slipping into, peering up through the gloom with the sides falling in on me, the chattering voices of each planned training mile just some of the clattering boulders in the avalanche. I’m no stranger to living with and usually successfully managing the symptoms of anxiety and it’s not by accident that the last organisation I raised cash for by running was a mental health charity, but I really can’t express, despite my verbosity, what it feels like to realise that the thing you rely upon to keep you sane has become one of the sticks you use to beat yourself back down in to the same mental illness you’re trying to escape. Where the hell does that leave you? Of course, I was still earning the cake… 1 Part accumulative physical fatigue, 1 part sudden inability to deal with feelings of obligation, 1 generous handful of complete and utter lack of confidence in the ability to do anything well, all topped off with a fine ganache of mentally associating shortness of breath and an increased heart rate with panic attacks and you’ve got yourself a tasty little morsel. Funnily enough, my reflection on having racked up the required miles at the end of Training Plan Week the Second was;“Maybe it serves more purpose as a mental boost than a physical conditioning achievement but they can be equally, if not more important!” Can anyone else taste the delicious irony!? Of course, I had a damn good bash at completing the 41 session miles on the week 3 plan (the whole of which arguably started too early and too fast anyway) and I wasn’t far off either, however, weigh that ‘achievement’ up against managing to exhaust myself both mentally and physically to the extent where even looking at the training plan resulted in a prickly adrenaline rush of panic and it doesn’t take much to see that something’s out of balance. Now, I’m not going to pretend that an overzealous approach to rigidly maintaining a training plan is the only reason I slipped back into the realms of not managing my anxiety (work and personal issues don’t need an airing on this particular platform). Nor will I suggest that a genuine hip niggle and the most persistent head-cold-cum-chesty-cough I’ve had in about 5 years haven’t been key ingredients in reducing my mileage and causing me to pull out of my first two 2015 races either. However; a stubborn unwillingness to recognise the importance of rest and recovery, both mental and physical have clearly resulted in the wheels falling off the whole wagon that is Mission Glittermouse. So what am I going to do about it? Well, first things first, I deleted that pesky panic-inducing training plan. I know that as long as I include a speed session, some hill work, a couple of medium/recovery runs and a good slow long one (oo-er!) in to most of my weeks I’ll be doing fine. The order or the specifics of those don’t matter. If I can get to a point about a month pre marathon where I’m doing up to 50 miles a week, great. If I can do 20 miles in one go about 6 weeks before, fantastic. As long as I allow time for a nice long taper, without getting injured, brilliant. And that’s enough. I am not a professional athlete, I am not being paid for this and it is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a hobby, something to do with my leisure time, not a new excuse to feel inadequate. Especially not when, let’s face it; no one else is going to care even a smidgen as much as I am. That’s not to dismiss training plans in their entirety, or appear complacent about the challenge, just that if the runs become the things you do to satisfy the plan… well that’s like the building being there to support the scaffolding and is all a bit about-face. Staying happy, healthy and running is surely the primary goal and if your plan (or more specifically in this case, your approach to fulfilling your plan) isn’t achieving that then get rid of it. Learn from the mistake and come back stronger. That’s what we runners do, right? Assess our performance and strategize. And on that thread… what’s the next most common mistake? Coming back from injury (yes, even a mental injury) too fast and causing a new and unrelated problem or a flare up of the old. So that pointless ego that was prancing about all over my last update and waving it’s bum in everyone’s face like a dog on heat, has been thoroughly banished. I’m not eating all the cake but I am swallowing my pride along with a generous portion of the humble pie. Yesterday, I ran 3.5 miles. Only 3.5 miles. My first run since New year’s Eve, 9 days in to 2015. And I ran them slowly. And it was damned hard work. Today, I eventually built myself up to 4.5 miles on the treadmill. It felt a little easier. Tomorrow, if I feel like I want to, I might run 6 but I should probably have a rest day. I’ve often said I wish I could take my own advice, so if this is the final thing you read before deciding you need to revise your plan, take a rest or just sack off your run ‘cause you feel a bit shitty; please learn from my mistake because I’d really like to think someone did. That’s not by way of dishing out an excuse to be lazy; you have to work hard to achieve your goals, but being honest about what those goals are and recognising that sometimes the best course of action is inaction isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. Blindly following the map to the last inch is of no use if you don’t then notice that your cartographer has failed to plot that slippery old slope and you end up careering over the cliff. Having said that, I can at least now report that there does appear to be something like a rough path up out of the abyss. It’s not an easy one to follow but it’s there. I’ll see you on the other side; but I’d take the bridge if I were you.

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Glittermouse is a visual artist, educator and practising Buddhist who also likes a bit of a run from time to time. In 2014, she realised others could benefit quite a lot from her reflections on running trials, tribulations, triumphs and trip-ups… so she added another volume to her package of blogging adventures.

You can find out more and source links to other projects on the 'home' page of this site.